Improving oil and gas collaboration

According to a new report, oil and gas pros view social media as important for productivity and collaboration; however, few firms have the tools in place to capitalize.

Research has revealed that the industry loses almost half a billion dollars annually due to inefficiencies around finding, using and sharing information among engineers alone. Around 40 percent of oil and gas professionals believe company adoption of new social media tools, including social networking sites, would boost productivity on the job, yet only one out of four report leveraging these newer tools to capture and share important information internally, according to a new Microsoft Corp. and Accenture survey released at the Microsoft Global Energy Forum 2009.

The Oil and Gas Collaboration Survey 2009, conducted by PennEnergy in partnership with the Oil & Gas Journal Research Center, surveyed industry engineers, geoscientists and business managers worldwide and found that more than 70 percent believe that collaboration and knowledge-sharing are important for driving revenue, cutting costs and contributed to the health and safety of workers. However, in spite of this, most respondents stated that their organizations are still using older means of collaboration, such as face-to-face meetings, e-mails and conference calls - even though newer, more sophisticated technology tools are available and in demand today.
 
Perhaps more telling is that 61 percent of respondents said they spend at least one hour each working day searching for information and knowledge sources necessary for their jobs. With an estimated 65,000 engineering professionals in the global oil and gas industry today, this translates into a potential loss of almost 10 million people-hours a year among engineers alone - an average net annual loss of $485 million for the industry, calculated according to US Department of Labor salary statistics.

"During this time of economic upheaval, when every dollar counts and effective decision-making is crucial, new technologies such as social media tools can help oil and gas industry professionals find information, collaborate and generally be more productive," says Craig Hodges, US energy and chemicals industry solutions director at Microsoft. "In an environment with fewer workers and less resources, this is incremental productivity our industry can use in finding new reserves, improving execution of capital projects, driving new innovations and reducing costs."

More effective collaboration tools

The survey pointed to one path companies can take to help maximize productivity and facilitate knowledge-sharing and capture: specifically, 41.5 percent of those polled said they could save at least an hour every day by using these newer and more effective collaboration tools. Surveyed professionals also revealed that advanced collaboration and information-sharing capabilities bring value not only in sharing enterprise knowledge but also in completing operational projects. For example, 74 percent said that these capabilities are very important in managing capital projects to drive down costs; 51 percent said they are very important in sourcing scarce technical skills needed to enhance revenues; and 50 percent saw these new technologies as very important to the sharing of health and safety advisories or experiences.
 
"Companies are dealing with several trends right now, not only the aging workforce walking out the door with decades of knowledge, but also experienced hires coming into their businesses who need to understand a new corporate culture," says Claire Markwardt, senior executive at Accenture's energy practice. "Companies have an opportunity to supplement their existing collaboration capabilities with newer tools such as podcasts and social networks to accelerate the sharing of knowledge, increase teaming and augment communication between their workforces in different regions."
 
While more than half the respondents favored adopting social media technologies to help shrink the productivity gap, only 37 percent of respondents think their companies are prepared to facilitate enhanced sharing and capturing of the company's intellectual capital. When asked why, almost half (48 percent) said company management doesn't view these issues as a problem. And 44 percent laid responsibility for lack of readiness on older workers who do not typically use digital knowledge-sharing capabilities. Still others said that vital company information is locked on individual PCs or spreadsheets not available for easy sharing.
 
"In the oil and gas industry, collaboration is a key strategy to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and promote collaborative working relationships among oilfield asset teams located in remote locations around the globe," says Jill Feblowitz, practice director at Energy Insights. "Energy Insights believes that the momentum behind Web 2.0 will bring it to the oil and gas industry. Web 2.0 technologies can support the following industry requirements: connection with remote geographic locations, knowledge capture, knowledge access, informal knowledge sharing, and joint ventures and team projects."

Capturing knowledge still challenging

Survey respondents also confirmed that concern about capturing knowledge from experienced workers before they retire or leave the company is prevalent. As might be expected, more than half (53 percent) reported that aging workers are retiring in increasing numbers.

However, survey respondents stated that the tools primarily used to retain this knowledge and intellectual capital from retiring workers are largely older methods, such as electronic file shares (64 percent), databases or repositories (58 percent) and written documents/physical files (58 percent). In fact, almost a quarter of respondents reported exit interviews as the tool used most often to capture knowledge from these workers.
 
Respondents overwhelmingly said new collaboration technologies can help stem this flow of exiting knowledge. Yet when asked how well their corporate cultures support the adoption of these new tools, only about one-third of respondents think their company cultures are well aligned with implementation of new social media technologies. Far more view their organizations as not proactive, not encouraging and/or opposed to the use of these information technology innovations as business tools.

Technology in action

Like countless other industry players, ConocoPhillips has three generations of employees working together side-by-side or dispersed around the world, and a significant number of the experienced workers are preparing to retire soon. That, plus regular attrition, creates the need for effective knowledge sharing.

"With our Intranet-based discussion forums, state-of-the-art browse-and-search tools, and content management processes, our portal structure goes a long way towards addressing the looming generational gap and maintaining our intellectual capital. This is a key part of our strategy to retain critical knowledge," says Dan Ranta, Director of Upstream Knowledge Sharing at ConocoPhillips.

Due to the global nature of the oil and gas industry, workers must additionally work with internal and external contacts that are located halfway around the world and may never meet face to face. "Portal sites make it possible for a diverse, global workforce to connect with each other easily, aided by a business-focused network structure that encourages people to form trusted relationships regardless of their location," he adds.

Take the example of how an employee in Indonesia posted a question to the network's online portal inquiring whether it was safe to extend the run time of a power turbine beyond its scheduled maintenance overhaul. The timing of the overhaul would have resulted in a significant impact to production while the turbine, and the gas compressor it drove, were temporarily shut down. Expert engineers in Alaska, Australia and the corporate engineering group all responded, indicating it was both safe and permissible to continue running the equipment as long as the power it produced was acceptable and vibration levels were below alarm limits. By temporarily extending the turbine's run time and deferring the overhaul to a more opportune time, the Indonesian unit avoided millions of dollars in additional lost production without compromising safety.

As the oil and gas industry becomes increasingly savvy in its use of information portals, new communities of internal and external users will emerge that share insight into resolving difficult industry challenges - from health, safety and environmental concerns to avoiding revenue loss. "The business impact of collaboration has made ConocoPhillips' people and operations safer, lessened environmental impacts and helped our operations reduce or avoid lost production," says Ranta. "Our operations have become more efficient, as in the case of our North Sea Business Unit that created and implemented a new Production Optimization Center. Along with reducing production losses, the POC has improved production coordination, planning and communication."

Emerging technologies

When asked which of the social media tools would be most beneficial for this task:

• 81 percent cited internet portals
• 58 percent pointed to social networking sites
• 56 percent named video or photo sharing
• 44 percent cited blogs or mini-blogs
• 43 percent preferred wikis

The power of IT

Long-term business success needs to be built on two things: innovation and productivity. New desktop and server solutions allow employees easy access to information anywhere at any time, while organizations can reduce risk through improved security and drive cost savings through virtualization and streamlined management capabilities.
 
In 2000, subsea services and construction support firm DeepOcean was among the first in its industry to implement the Windows platform for its onshore operations and offshore data processing. DeepOcean is now migrating to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 because of its need to support its sales force and engineers who travel between onshore and offshore locations. These mobile employees rely on portable computers that make up more than 25 percent of the company's computer fleet.

When DeepOcean migrated to the Windows platform, it implemented the Windows NT 4.0 operating system on its 50 client computers and the Windows NT Server 4.0 operating system on its 10 servers, which it is gradually upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2. In an effort to enhance security for its portable computers and to address challenges with its virtual private network solution, the company also decided to migrate to the Windows 7 operating system. As a result of the upgrade, DeepOcean has simplified IT management, enhanced IT security and improved employee productivity.
 
"Windows 7 has enabled our mobile work force to connect to the corporate network and access all the resources they need faster and more easily," said Per Arne Strømø, IT manager at DeepOcean. "At the same time, the technology offers us a highly secure and reliable tool to help protect our confidential data and intellectual property even when on the road."
 
Statoil also wanted to improve employee productivity by making sure that workers in its increasingly global operations could fully collaborate with their colleagues. To address remote access issues that could hinder employee productivity and collaboration, the oil company intends to implement the Windows 7 and the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems, which together offer features to improve data access at branch offices and simplify remote connectivity. As a result of the upgrade, Statoil will deliver seamless access to the corporate network for traveling employees, improve information access at branch offices and enhance IT security. "We'll be able to better support our strategy as a global company and more easily share information no matter where our employees and consultants reside," said Petter Wersland, leading advisor for IT Infrastructure at Statoil.

"Our industry is facing unprecedented challenges, and doing more with less is a priority for many of our customers," said Dr Ali Ferling, Managing Director of Microsoft's Worldwide Oil and Gas Industries. "The role of IT as a key enabler to drive business efficiency is more important than ever."